Over the past month, Donald Trump let the last nuclear weapons treaty between the U.S. and Russia expire. This treaty froze the number of those weapons at 1,500 for each side—more than enough to wipe out the entire population of the earth many times over. Yet, this was not enough for Donald Trump, nor were there any serious opposed voices raised by other prominent politicians. To quote the New York Times, this “leaves both superpowers with no limits on the size or structure of their arsenals, at the very moment both are planning new generations of nuclear war heads.” [emphasis added] 

The U.S. has projected an increase in spending on “defense” of 66 percent next year, over an already high increase this year—and further increases for each of the next 10 years. Other powers—both “lesser” imperialist powers like France or Poland, and wannabe imperialists—are now moving to add to their “stockpile” or to begin to produce their own nuclear weapons if they do not yet have them. Meanwhile, the main U.S. rival for world domination—China—has been making its own rapid and dramatic advances in nuclear war technology and weaponry, as has Russia. 

It is no wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists recently set their “Doomsday Clock”¹ at 85 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s ever been. 

This is insane. Utterly insane. The capacity exists to wipe out human misery, hunger and exploitation… and yet this capacity is being driven to develop quicker, more efficient and more complete ways to destroy humanity.

But there is a logic driving this insanity. It is the death-bound logic of expand or die. It is the logic built into the system we are forced to live under. And that system is capitalism-imperialism—in which a handful of powers are driven to contend for control of the people and resources of the planet… lest they be driven under by a rival power. 

In the face of this escalated threat of the mass extinction of humanity, the millions and millions of decent people, who would want to see a world without war, have largely ignored what is happening. This LACK of public alarm, or even awareness, especially as compared to earlier times when the threat of nuclear war heightened and people did raise alarms and resist it, is a very striking aspect of this situation. 

Why such silence at the gates of hell?

Some people tell themselves it’s hopeless… and thereby accept the extreme and accelerating danger of humanity being incinerated! To those who do this: you don’t want to look too close, do you? You don’t want to seriously think about this “problem” that threatens humanity. But is not this act of acceptance (even in the form of “I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it” ignore-ance) also insane? Criminally insane?

For here is the hard but liberating truth: it is hopeless so long as you insist on confining your thinking to terms based on working within (or in some cases on the margins of) the capitalist-imperialist system that birthed these weapons and is now pumping the gas toward Armageddon. 

A Scientific Basis for Hope

But if you can liberate yourself from the myth that “there is no alternative” to capitalism-imperialism, then there is a basis for hope and a way to go to work on making this hope a reality. Real hope—hope founded in that material reality and a scientific approach to understanding that reality, including as it pertains to society… and to war. This has been addressed by Bob Avakian, and it’s worth quoting at length:

It is true that, so long as there are nuclear armed imperialist (and other reactionary) states, the people of the world will be subject to nuclear blackmail. That underscores once again the profound, and acute, importance of my statement that the people of the world can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity—they need to be overthrown as quickly as possible. (This statement is part of interviews that were done with me last fall on the YouTube RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show.)

We, the people of the world, can no longer afford to allow these imperialists to continue to dominate the world and determine the destiny of humanity. And it is a scientific fact that humanity does not have to live this way.

In order to no longer live this way, it is necessary to carry out a thoroughgoing revolution, to overthrow the system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring into being a radically different and much better system. A sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is contained in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored. In this Constitution, the following is made very clear:

"The New Socialist Republic in North America will not develop, and will not use, nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. It will wage a determined and many-sided struggle to rid the world of all such weapons—and it will do this as part of the larger, overall struggle to defeat and dismantle all imperialist and reactionary states and forces and to advance toward the achievement of communism, throughout the world, which will finally make it possible for the desires and dreams of countless human beings throughout history, and the fundamental interests of humanity, for a world without war, to at long last be realized."

This is not just a dream or simply a lofty aspiration. As I have spoken to throughout these messages (and in a concentrated way in numbers One through Eleven), this is a rare time when the revolution to overthrow this system—yes, right in this powerful capitalist-imperialist country—is not only urgently necessary but is possible, and this revolution would make possible a crucial leap toward an emancipating future in which humanity can truly thrive, without the terrible suffering to which the masses of humanity are now subjected, and without the continual threat of nuclear annihilation. (from REVOLUTION #42: Imperialism—and Imperialist War: What is, and is not, its fundamental motivation, nature and role, and how it can be finally ended.)

Get into Bob Avakian. Learn about the revolution we need, the emancipating leadership we have and the world we could win.